


Summoned

by HopeCoppice



Series: The Dowserverse [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Boarding School, Demon Summoning, Fluff, Gen, Silly British boarding school stereotypes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:42:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23346370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopeCoppice/pseuds/HopeCoppice
Summary: Warlock summons a demon, for fun. We all know where this is going.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley & Warlock Dowling, Nanny Ashtoreth & Warlock Dowling
Series: The Dowserverse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1694872
Comments: 50
Kudos: 468





	Summoned

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Natsue_Yotsuki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Natsue_Yotsuki/gifts).



> As requested by Natsue_Yotsuki.
> 
> I am FINALLY posting this after like an hour of fiddling because the footnotes turned out to be extremely cursed ~~by which I mean I made a pig's ear of the code~~ BUT here it is, enjoy it.

It had all started off as such a promising idea.

Warlock Dowling, aged 14, and four of his classmates at the fancy boarding school his father had insisted on sending him to, had had the sugar-fuelled notion of getting into the occult arts. Specifically, they were going to summon a demon, and ask it to do all their homework for them - “Not that it’s really _homework,_ ” Duffers had pointed out doubtfully, “since we live here; you have to be specific about that sort of thing when you’re summoning demons,” - and it was all going to be a jolly good lark, according to Wellies. Wellies - Quentin Wellington VII, according to his birth certificate, Wellies to his classmates, and Splash to Phillip Duffham and Phillip Duffham alone - was the sort of person who just knew how things were going to turn out, and they were always going to be _ripping larks_ and all sorts of other nonsense nobody else would ever say, and you just went along with it because it was _Wellies_ , and if things didn’t go as Wellies thought they should then Quentin Wellington VI would soon see to it that they _did_. Wellies said it would be a lark, and so a lark it would be.

That’s how Warlock found himself standing at one point of a hastily-drawn star with a bag of marshmallows at its centre, candles burning all around the edges of the circle it was enclosed in.

“Make sure you’re outside the circle,” Rich reminded them officiously, “it says here the summonee - that’s the demon - will be trapped inside it, but we don’t want to be trapped in there with it.” Rich - Horace Richmond - was a stickler for detail and had therefore been entrusted with _the book_ , which they’d found down the back of a bookshelf in the school library a week ago.

Warlock obediently checked that his feet were outside the chalk line, then stepped back an inch just to be sure. He should - although he hadn’t mentioned this to his friends - have dominion over any being of Hell that might find itself in the circle, but it was possible they wouldn’t know that yet. It would be better to be safe than sorry. To his left, Wellies checked the positioning of his feet; on _his_ left, Duffers shuffled awkwardly backwards.

“Do you think we should hold hands, Splash?” But Wellies only had to raise an eyebrow and Duffers was backing down. “Or not, silly idea, I just thought maybe like they do in seances-”

“You’re top in Latin, Monty. You’d better do the reading.” Rich passed the book to Laurence Montgomery, on Warlock’s right, and Monty cleared his throat. [1]

“Right. Ready, chaps? Let’s see… place the offering in the centre and recite… ah. Yes. Right. Yes.”

“Any time now, Monty,” Wellies prompted, “preferably before the beaks catch us.”

“Do you want it done _fast_ , or do you want it done _right?”_ Monty snapped.

“Both, ideally-”

“Just get on with it, already,” Warlock groaned, “if I was here to watch you guys fight, I wouldn’t have bothered drawing a summoning circle.”

“Everybody just shut up so I can concentrate!” It took Monty a moment to gather his composure, and then he raised the book again.  “ _Demon infernus, si vocare te obligamus praecipio tibi, potentias sub angelus et super terram, et sta coram nobis impetrare.”_ [2]

Monty had barely uttered the last word when all the candles they’d set around the chalk flickered out and a strange gust of wind seemed to blow out from inside the circle. Warlock fumbled in his pocket for the little torch he kept there - the school building being old, and power cuts not infrequent - but even in the abrupt darkness, he could see a figure standing in the centre of the circle, where no figure had been before. When he raised his torch and flicked it on, the tiny circle of illumination picked out a partially-unbuttoned black shirt with tiny dark scales just visible beneath it; the figure moved and Warlock jumped, the light lurching upwards to reveal yellow eyes with slitted pupils before they were replaced by dark red hair. Rich, being the most sensible and also the nearest to the light switch, hit the lights just as Warlock spoke.

“Nanny?”

But the creature in the circle, once the lights flickered on, was a man-shaped being, tall and lithe, casting those snakelike yellow eyes around him as if searching for a trap. That was fair enough, Warlock supposed; he was standing in one. He glanced around, too, to find that Duffers and Wellies were clinging to one another, clearly terrified, and Rich had frozen with his hand on the light switch, as if he wasn’t sure whether to turn the lights off again in the hopes that it would make the demon disappear. Monty had dropped the book, and it had fallen inside the circle. For now, the demon - it had to be a demon - didn’t seem to have noticed; he was flushed, Warlock noticed now, and breathing heavily, as if he’d been summoned in the middle of some sort of infernal marathon.

Nobody else seemed inclined to talk, so Warlock cleared his throat.

“Er. Hello? Who are you?”

The demon drew himself up to his full height and snarled. “Your worst nightmare, little humans, the sort of thing your _nightmares_ have nightmares abo-” But then he turned, and his eyes fell upon Warlock, and he stopped abruptly, wearing a perplexed expression that seemed terribly familiar. Nanny Ashtoreth had worn one just like it when Warlock had managed to fit himself - in his entirety - into her handbag, aged six. The resemblance was uncanny.

“Nanny Ash?” He ventured again, and the demon seemed to shake himself out of whatever confusion he was experiencing.

“Do I _look_ like a nanny?” He turned away, reaching down to scoop up the book at his feet. “Oh, is _this_ what you used- _under an angel, over the Earth,_ shocking grammar, no wonder it- you’ve got rotten timing, the one time I actually _was_ , and just when things were getting interesting…” His cheeks reddened slightly and he looked up, meeting Monty’s eyes. “Oh, yeah, by the way. You shouldn’t summon demons, and if you _do_ , you shouldn’t let them have the book you used. Lets them do this.” He made a sharp upward motion with his hand, and the chalk markings disintegrated. The demon smiled, showing altogether too many teeth. “Boys? _Run.”_

Monty yelped and raced for the door, now swinging on its hinges where Rich had just made his escape. Duffers yelped, “Run, Splash!” and the two of them raced off in pursuit of their friends, their hands still locked together in a grip so tight that Warlock could see their knuckles turning white. The demon rounded on him, next.

“You, too, Warlock.”

“No, thanks. I think I’ll stay right here.” He shrugged. “You’re not as scary as my Nanny Ash.”

“I am _exactly_ as scary as your Nanny Ash,” the demon argued, and then seemed to realise his mistake. “Oh, bollocks.”

“So you do _know_ my Nanny Ash,” Warlock told him smugly, “and you look just like her. So either you’re her brother, or you’re just her. And she never mentioned a brother.”

“Never mentioned a mother, either,” the demon pointed out, “but you assumed she had one.”

“No, I never really thought about that at all,” Warlock admitted. “ _Do_ you have a mother?”

“I don’t talk about Her,” the demon snarled, “why aren’t you more surprised?”

“That Nanny Ash is a demon? Or that she’s man-shaped?”

“Either. Both.” The demon shifted from foot to foot, apparently agitated - and something crackled at his feet. He paused, then bent to scoop it up. “Marshmallows? You summoned a demon using _marshmallows?_ ” For a moment, Warlock thought he was angry, but then he seemed to give up on the idea. “These are mine now.” He tore open the packet and popped one into his mouth, then offered them to Warlock as if by reflex. Warlock accepted, because it seemed only polite.

After a moment, the demon stuck his hand out to be shaken. Warlock accepted that, too.

“Since I’m here. Demon Crowley, decidedly _not_ at your service. Not at anyone’s service, actually, except perhaps Aziraphale’s, and don’t tell him I said that or I’ll never hear the end of it. Crowley, C-R-O-W-L-E-Y, pronounce it like the nursery rhyme, do you want me to write it down? Because if you ever do anything as monumentally _stupid_ as trying to summon a demon again, you’d better ask for me by name. Safer, that.”

“Crowley. Got it. Who’s Aziraphale? You might have to spell that one.”

“Brother Francis. Wait, why would you need that? You can’t summon angels, that’s one of the perks of the job.”

“Brother Francis is an _angel?”_

“I- oh, Heaven, he’s going to smite me when he hears I’ve told you about all this. Bad enough I got called away in the middle of- well, never you mind.” Crowley glared at him as if he’d been interrogating the demon about his activities rather than sitting on the edge of a desk, eyeing the bag of marshmallows hopefully and trying.to keep up. Warlock simply gazed serenely at him in that way he’d found made adults sigh and give up on whatever they were trying to do.

Crowley sighed and gave up, holding out the bag of marshmallows.

“Look,” he began as Warlock helped himself, “don’t judge me. He doesn’t look exactly like he did when you knew him, it was a disguise. But, er, we’re together now. Me and him. We were, er, well, when you summoned me-”

“You were getting off?”

“No! We- er, wait, what do you mean by getting off?”

“Making out. Fooling around. Snogging.”

“Oh. Yeah. Thought you meant shagging.”

“Were you?” Warlock couldn’t help but ask. “Shagging?” It sounded wrong in his accent, and he knew it, but there was no helping that.

“No! No.” The demon huffed. “We were just getting to that.”

“What stopped you?”

“Bunch of idiot teenagers decided to dabble in the dark arts.” Crowley slouched over and sat next to him on the desk, stuffing another marshmallow into his mouth.

Warlock pondered what he’d learned for a moment, then realised he had a pressing question.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Go ahead,” Crowley managed around a mouthful of marshmallow.

“Brother Francis - is that why you’re a man now?”

“I’m not a man. I’m man-shaped, and I use _he_ for pronouns, but I’m not technically a man. Or a woman,” he hurried on, as Warlock opened his mouth to ask another question, “that’s not transphobia, I just mean that I’m a whole different species. What do you mean, is Brother Francis why?”

“Did you change because he likes men?”

“Oh. No, I like to mix it up, that’s all. I’ve been a lot of genders, in my time.”

“Good. You shouldn’t have to change to make someone love you.” Warlock shrugged. “I’m glad you’re happy.”

Crowley regarded him thoughtfully for a moment.

“You turned out all right, didn’t you?” He murmured, so softly Warlock almost didn’t catch it, and then cleared his throat as if to try to drown the words out. “That’s not the question I thought you’d ask.”

“What did you expect me to ask?”

“I thought you’d ask why we left you.” The demon was staring at the floor, now, and he didn’t look up as Warlock turned to him.

“I always thought it was obvious why you left.”

“Hm?”

“I always thought you left because I was a disappointment.” Crowley’s eyes snapped up to meet his, and for a moment it was Nanny Ash looking through them, always gentle and fond despite her stern exterior. “Those powers you were always telling me about, I never did manage to make them work.”

“Ah. Yeah. About that,” Crowley began, then stopped. “No, hang on, before I get to that. Warlock Thaddeus Dowling, you have _never_ been a disappointment to me. Or Aziraphale. You are a human being, full of endless potential, and you’re far too young to start feeling that you’ve wasted it. Your _mother_ is too young to feel like that; your _great-grandmother_ , were she still alive, would be too young to have wasted her life. And you, you are anything but disappointing. Look at how you’ve turned out, brave and caring and kind even after the messed-up upbringing we gave you. Oh, lamb. You could never be a disappointment to me.”

Warlock felt himself blush, heat rushing through his cheeks and to the very tips of his ears, and hung his head so his hair would hide his face.

“But I never crushed any nations beneath my heels-”

“That was a prophecy for another boy, not you. We got confused,” Crowley admitted, “and I’m glad, because I couldn’t have watched you stand at the end of the world. My heart would have broken.” Perhaps he felt he’d exposed too much of himself, because he thrust the bag of marshmallows in front of Warlock’s nose and scrunched it obnoxiously until Warlock took one. “For what it’s worth, he didn’t crush any nations, either.”

“Oh. I suppose that’s all right, then.”

They sat for a while in companionable silence, Warlock pressing unconsciously into the warmth of Crowley’s side.

“So that’s what was behind the glasses, huh.”

“Hm?” The demon’s hand came up as if to shield his eyes, but he lowered it back to his side as if he’d just realised it was already too late. “Oh. Yeah. Now you know why I kept them hidden.”

“Yeah, I would have been way too jealous if I knew you had snake eyes.”

“Y- n- jealous?” Crowley blinked. “Right. Yeah.”

“I have another question, if you don’t mind.” Warlock was quite pleased with the way he said that; he’d learnt from his mother that if you got the tone of voice _just right,_ ‘if you don’t mind’ could work exactly the same way ‘and you can’t stop me’ ought to.

“Oh. Fire away.”

“Why haven’t you left?”

“What do you mean?” The demon looked genuinely confused; Warlock rolled his eyes as politely as he could. This was still his Nanny, after all.

“Well, you got rid of the circle, so you could have left any time. And you sounded _busy.”_ He paused to waggle his eyebrows, just to make sure he got his point across. “So why are you still here?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Missed you, I suppose. It was nice to catch up.”

“Yeah, we should do it again. Do you have a phone?” Crowley handed it over, looking puzzled, and Warlock quickly tapped in the number for the mobile phone in his bedside drawer upstairs. “There. Now you have no excuse for not calling.”

“Does that mean you won’t try _this-”_ Crowley gestured vaguely at the floor where they’d drawn their circle, “-again?”

“Depends if you call,” Warlock told him, “I don’t have _your_ number.”

“I’ll text you later,” Crowley promised, “don’t you dare. That stuff is dangerous, Warlock, even if you really were the Antichrist. And you’re not.”

“Right, so, shouldn’t you be getting home to Brother Francis?”

“Yeah, probably. Last thing you need is him turning up here.” Crowley stood, clutching the half-empty bag of marshmallows in one hand and stopping to pick up the book he’d left on a nearby table. “ _This_ is coming with me. And so are these.” He handed Warlock one last marshmallow, and the gesture felt oddly reminiscent of a pat on the head. “What will you tell your friends?”

“Oh, I don’t remember anything after them leaving the room. I think I must have fallen over and knocked myself out, trying to run away.”

“There’s my boy.” Crowley tucked the book under his arm so he really _could_ pat him on the head, then, and then he smiled fondly. “Goodbye for now, lamb,” he began, in a soft Scottish brogue, and then stopped. “Oh, and tell your friend, the one with the glasses-”

“Duffers,” Warlock supplied.

“Oh, really? Ugh. Anyway, tell him I said- _the demon_ said to spit it out, it’s clearly mutual.”

“Spit what out?”

“He’ll know. Watch out, someone’s coming.” He made a sharp tugging motion in thin air, and Warlock found himself alone in the empty classroom.

He didn’t know where his little gang had found salt - presumably the school canteen - but he was immensely grateful to them for coming back for him.

“I don’t remember much,” he told them dutifully, once they’d covered the classroom with salt and were satisfied that the place had been cleansed of demonic energies, “just that he- it said to tell you, Duffers, to _spit it out, it’s mutual_. And-” he continued hurriedly, as Duffers glanced involuntarily at Wellies, “not to try anything as stupid as that again.”

“And it didn’t hurt you?”

“I don’t think so,” Warlock promised, “I don’t think we had anything it wanted.”

“I’m pretty sure it was a shared hallucination,” Rich announced, “we just thought a demon would appear so our eyes played tricks on us. Nothing _really_ happened.”

Warlock closed his hand a little more tightly around the marshmallow he was still holding, and agreed that he was probably right.

Later that evening, Warlock’s phone lit up with a message.

_Sender: Unsaved Number._

_Message: Go to sleep, don’t dream of pain… C x_

He read it and smiled, saving the number to his contacts.

_Contact saved: Nanny._

**Author's Note:**

> [1] In summary, Warlock's friends are: Quentin "Wellies" Wellington, Phillip "Duffers" Duffham, Horace "Rich" Richmond, and Laurence "Monty" Montgomery; it may come as a relief to know that their names and particulars don't matter very much in the grand scheme of things. It may also relieve you to discover that Warlock, as a relative newcomer to the school, is simply known as "Dowling". He will, no doubt, be fitted with an embarrassing Jeeves-and-Wooster level nickname when he has properly settled in, and will carry said nickname with pride or shame to the end of his days. [return to text]
> 
> [2] The Latin here should read: Demon of Hell, we summon you, we bind you and command you, you beneath the angel and above the powers of Earth, we implore and demand that you present yourself before us now.
> 
> HOWEVER, I used Google Translate so what it says when you run it back through is: The demon hell, if you call oblige giving it powers lower angels on earth and confront our request is obtained.
> 
> ...Which at least doesn’t seem to be something you could use to potentially get yourself into bother. I do feel I should apologise, however, to anyone who can actually read Latin.  
> [return to text]


End file.
